The 3 Tips to Attract the right Venture Capital to fund your dream

Do you find yourself getting frustrated that your goals are not being achieved fast enough?

Despite all the passion that you have for your work, do you find yourself wishing you could share that passion in a way that was more contagious?

Is it hard to understand why venture capitalists and advertisers are so slow to commit?

No matter what our title is at a job, we are all the CEOs in our own career. Whether we are working for a company or running one, we need innovative ways to break through the clutter and move the needle on revenue.

Here are three key things to remember to tell your story about your products to potential buyers or investors:

I. Sell YOURSELF first!

People buy from people they like and who show empathy for their situation. Establish your credibility, doing it in a way that shows how you helped someone else achieve their goals.

Telling a story is a great tool to promote who you are.

Here’s an example from my past as the Conde Nast salesperson of 2012 for the entire company. I realized that coming up with a “never been done before “ idea was the key to my success. Guess jeans was celebrating their 30th anniversary in the same year that W magazine was celebrating their 40th anniversary. The concept that I came up with and got the CEO of Guess to embrace was to run an exclusive onsert showing 30 years of Guess models with W’s 40th anniversary issue. This generated over $500,000 in new revenue to W. The event’s goal was to find a way to drive press and awareness. We did a party that included images of Guess models such as Drew Barrymore next to images of herself when she was on the W cover. This resulted in amazing celebrity turnout and press for Guess.

A great way to get even more engagement after sharing your story is to ask the buyer for theirs. In the book, What Great Salespeople Do, it says “Everyone has a story to tell if given the chance. People want to tell their stories—they want to be heard, they want to connect, they want to be understood. It’s human nature. Pass the torch to your listeners and watch them run with it.”

What does your company stand for? People need to hear the story of how your company was founded and WHY. When you tell a memorable story of how the company got started, it gives people an emotional connection.

Howard Schultz toured Italy and saw many people drinking coffee in cafes as a place for conversation and a sense of community. It was so MUCH more than just selling coffee . He wanted to take the same concept to America. He faced multiple rejections from venture capitalists, but was relentless and opened up his first coffee shop in Seattle. The mission remains the same-“Inspire and nurture the human spirit-one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.”

So many salespeople make the mistake of starting off the presentation with details and features of the product without selling themselves and the company first. It puts the prospect on the defense out of the gate and ends up creating friction vs having a natural flow of connection.

When you do get to the presentation to pitch the product, be sure to focus on the benefits to either the decision maker, or the end user, or both.

Here’s another great story about a startup that go Mark Cuban invested in their new social media app Ocho. The crazy thing is that it creates videos that are only 8 seconds long. Here’s the story:

The founders of a new app were asked what made their product unique vs the competition. Here is what they said:

“Everything we build under the hood is designed to power a vision — the experience we want our users to have. For instance, Ocho is the first social network to introduce voiceover and volume control because that’s what we felt was necessary to make good UGC [user generated content] video.”

Note their answer is not about the features, but the focus is on what the benefits are to the user.

“People who tell the stories rule the world” Plato

So the question to ask yourself about what you offer is “Who have you helped?”

If you do not have all the answers to these questions and need some insights, let me know. The first people to send me their email to john@johnlivesay.com will receive a free 30 minute coaching session.